The chief victim of Honda's Super GT reshuffle

When Honda announced its 2019 motorsport programme at the Tokyo Auto Salon last week, one of its long-standing servants was surprisingly absent from its Super GT line-up.

Along with Kosuke Matsuura, 2010 champion Takashi Kogure was dropped off Honda’s driver roster, the two making way for Formula 2 race winner Tadasuke Makino and Super Formula convert Narain Karthikeyan.

But while Matsuura was given a berth by Honda in the GT300 category, Kogure was booted entirely from Super GT - which came as something of a surprise when you consider his glittering CV.

Kogure first caught the attention of Honda in 2002, when he dominated the All-Japan F3 series with 11 wins in 20 races.

More impressively, he scored a podium on his Macau GP debut the same year, in a field featuring the likes of future Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen, Supercars champion James Courtney and Ford WEC regular Olivier Pla.

That convinced Honda to promote him to Formula Nippon - the forerunner to the present-day Super Formula series - with Nakajima Racing, and in 2004 he picked up his first race win at Suzuka.

Six more victories would follow in a career spanning over a decade and he came closest to winning the title in 2007, when he finished third in the championship - just five points behind Tsugio Matsuda.

Tsugio Matsuda/Takashi Kogure

Photo by: Hiroshi Yamamura

Kogure would also undertake a parallel programme in JGTC (now Super GT) after his 2002 Japanese F3 success, although he hit an early roadblock when he was forced to move aside after just three races for a then fresh-faced Andre Lotterer.

But his success in Formula Nippon drew him back to JGTC in 2005, now with Dome Racing, and he would become a regular front-runner in the series.

The real breakthrough came in 2010, when Loic Duval left Nakajima Racing to join him at Dome. Together the two powered their way to the drivers’ title, beating multiple-time champions Lotterer and Juichi Wakisaka.

Kogure switched to Real Racing in 2016 and stayed with the team for the next two seasons. The 38-year-old's most recent race win came at last year’s Okayama season opener, and he and Koudai Tsukakoshi eventually finished a creditable seventh in the championship.

While Honda's decision to sideline Kogure entirely seems puzzling at first, a closer look at the situation suggests why the Japanese manufacturer decided to part ways with one of its more successful drivers.

Kogure isn't directly replaced by rookies Makino or Karthikeyan but by Super GT regular and Suzuka 1000km winner Bertrand Baguette, who is moving across from Nakajima Racing after five seasons with the team.

Baguette is rated highly by Honda's top brass according to insiders and an interview with the manufacturer's motorsport boss Masashi Yamamoto suggests that he felt the Belgian would make a better pairing with Tsukakoshi than Kogure.

“[Kogure] even won the opening race of last year and I am truly thankful to a driver who has made a great contribution to Honda," said Yamamoto. "He truly gave his all for a long time.

"But, as well as me, each team also wanted to make a system that brings the series title a little closer, and we made such a system. I explained to him in full, we [still] have a good relationship.”

Honda wanted to lock down its successful pairings at Kunimitsu and ARTA, and with Tsukakoshi maintaining a strong relationship with Real Racing, Kogure was always going to be the one who lost out.